Technical Field
The present invention relates to a motor vehicle front end and to a method for assembling a motor vehicle front end.
Prior Art
Motor vehicle front ends of the type in question are, in particular, pre-assembled modules of a motor vehicle that are regularly composed of struts in the height and transverse directions of the motor vehicle, with additional motor vehicle parts accommodated thereof. These additional motor vehicle parts may regularly entail parts of the motor vehicle lighting, radiator, bumpers, and/or shock-absorbing elements, such as, for example, so-called crash boxes, cladding elements, locking elements for the hood, sensors, and the like. For the sake of terminological simplicity, merely the term “front end” is used hereinbelow to refer to motor vehicle front ends.
In the manufacture of modern motor vehicles, it is common for front ends to be prefabricated at different production facilities than the production facilities at which the front ends are assembled onto the rest of the motor vehicle. This is often due to the fact that the front ends are made by suppliers, whereas the front end is assembled onto the rest of the motor vehicle first in the context of the completion of the motor vehicle and thus normally by the manufacturer of the motor vehicle.
Modern motor vehicles are offered in a variety of configurations, in order, for example, to meet national requirements for approval of the motor vehicle or to meet customer needs, which necessitate different equipment features on the motor vehicle. Within the framework of production planning, therefore, the front end is regularly already adapted in the assembly to individual equipment features of the eventual motor vehicle, and thus, in particular, special headlamp types for different markets or different equipment variants are used. If the headlamp is assembled at the earlier stage of the prefabrication of the front end, then this reduces the logistical complexity of finishing the motor vehicle, because this obviates the need to keep different types of headlamps available and to assign the headlamps to the respective motor vehicles.
However, it is not always possible to assemble the headlamp onto the motor vehicle front end before assembly thereof onto the motor vehicle. Often, for design reasons, auto body parts are shaped such that it is not possible for the front end to be connected to the motor vehicle with the headlamps being already present in the assembly position thereof, i.e., the position in which the headlamps are to be assembled in the fabrication of the motor vehicle. In such cases, the front ends are pre-assembled without headlamps, brought to the production facility for the finishing manufacture, and assembled there onto the motor vehicle. The headlamps are then assembled—regularly by hand—in an additional step. Then, the individual headlamps, having been assigned to the respective motor vehicle being fabricated, must be made available on the assembly line. Examples of individual headlamp types that are used include US and EU variants, variants for vehicles with left-hand drive and right-hand drive, and variants with different light sources, such as halogen headlamps, xenon headlamps, and/or LED head lamps. Providing individual headlamps on the assembly line and ensuring that the correct headlamps are assembled onto the correct motor vehicle results in an undesirable logistical complexity.